Breaking Bad - The Thee-Hour Finale That Never Was

The actual "Breaking Bad" finale could have been a 180-minute pay-per-view vent.

Breaking Bad is over, that thought can’t be avoided (except for those, who still haven’t seen the finale and who are now fighting a losing battle against spoilers.) Now all we have is the pleasure of rewatching and finding all the bits we missed the first time round, as well as quite a lot of background info. For example, did you know that Dreamworks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg offered the Breaking Bad creators $25 million an episode for three more episodes of the show, 180 minutes in total, with one stipulation – the episodes were to air online, as pay-per-view, in excruciating six-minute increments.

30 six-minute episodes? We dodged a bullet there.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Katzenberg wanted to make this “the greatest pay-per-view event in scripted television ever.” Thankfully, that sadistic (or maybe brilliant) idea could not be realized, thanks to the definitive series finale (trying really hard not to spoil anything here.)

Even though this idea was a non-starter, Katzenberg shared the story with THR, in order to drive home the point that distributors will continue to pay ridiculous amounts of money for quality scripted programming, whether it is distributed online or through more traditional means.

"There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that millions of people would have downloaded those episodes."

And by "bullet" we mean several more days of overwhelming tension.

In fact, the Dreamworks chief demonstrated his intent to invest in so-called “new media” beyond any doubt recently, by making a massive investment of $33 million Brian Robbins' YouTube channel AwesomenesssTV, which currently has 909,000 subscribers and 176 million views and already has spawned a successful Nickelodeon series of the same name, as well as a hugely successful multi-channel network (MCN.) Online content is all well and good, but this staff writer is extremely happy with not having to pay through the nose for what was arguably the most highly anticipated TV event of the decade.